A Feast for Dragons

dead.”
    “Snow,”
screamed Lord Mormont’s raven.
“Snow,
Snow.”
    Jon ignored him. “We have been questioning the wildlings we
brought back from the grove. Several of them told an interesting tale, of a
woods witch called Mother Mole.”
    “Mother
Mole?”
said Bowen Marsh. “An
unlikely name.”
    “Supposedly she made her home in a burrow beneath a hollow
tree. Whatever the truth of that, she had a vision of a fleet of ships arriving
to carry the free folk to safety across the narrow sea. Thousands of those who
fled the battle were desperate enough to believe her. Mother Mole has led them
all to Hardhome, there to pray and await salvation from across the sea.”
    Othell Yarwyck scowled. “I’m no ranger,
but … Hardhome is an unholy place, it’s said. Cursed. Even your uncle
used to say as much, Lord Snow. Why would they go
there?”
    Jon had a map before him on the table. He turned it so they
could see. “Hardhome sits on a sheltered bay and has a natural harbor deep
enough for the biggest ships afloat. Wood and stone are plentiful near there.
The waters teem with fish, and there are colonies of seals and sea cows close
at hand.”
    “All that’s true, I don’t doubt,” said Yarwyck, “but it’s
not a place I’d want to spend a night. You know the tale.”
    He did. Hardhome had been halfway toward becoming a town,
the only true town north of the Wall, until the night six hundred years ago
when hell had swallowed it. Its people had been carried off into slavery or slaughtered
for meat, depending on which version of the tale you believed, their homes and
halls consumed in a conflagration that burned so hot that watchers on the Wall
far to the south had thought the sun was rising in the north. Afterward ashes
rained down on haunted forest and Shivering Sea alike for almost half a year.
Traders reported finding only nightmarish devastation where Hardhome had stood,
a landscape of charred trees and burned bones, waters choked with swollen
corpses, blood-chilling shrieks echoing from the cave mouths that pocked the
great cliff that loomed above the settlement.
    Six centuries had come and gone since that night, but
Hardhome was still shunned. The wild had reclaimed the site, Jon had been told,
but rangers claimed that the overgrown ruins were haunted by ghouls and demons
and burning ghosts with an unhealthy taste for blood. “It is not the sort of
refuge I’d chose either,” Jon said, “but Mother Mole was heard to preach that
the free folk would find salvation where once they found damnation.”
    Septon Cellador pursed his lips. “Salvation can be found
only through the Seven. This witch has doomed them all.”
    “And saved the Wall, mayhaps,” said Bowen Marsh. “These are
enemies we speak of. Let them pray amongst the ruins, and if their gods send
ships to carry them off to a better world, well and good. In this world I have
no food to feed them.”
    Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand. “Cotter Pyke’s
galleys sail past Hardhome from time to time. He tells me there is no shelter there
but the caves.
The screaming caves
, his men call them. Mother
Mole and those who followed her will perish there, of cold and starvation.
Hundreds of them. Thousands.”
    “Thousands of enemies. Thousands of
wildlings.”
    Thousands of people
, Jon thought.
Men,
women, children
. Anger rose inside him, but when he spoke his voice
was quiet and cold. “Are you so blind, or is it that you do not wish to see?
What do you think will happen when all these enemies are dead?”
    Above the door the raven muttered,
“Dead, dead,
dead.”
    “Let me tell you what will happen,” Jon said. “The dead will
rise again, in their hundreds and their thousands. They will rise as wights,
with black hands and pale blue eyes, and
they will come for us
.”
He pushed himself to his feet, the fingers of his sword hand opening and
closing. “You have my leave to go.”
    Septon Cellador rose grey-faced and sweating, Othell Yarwyck
stiffly, Bowen Marsh tight-lipped and pale. “Thank you for your time, Lord
Snow.” They left without another word.
    ----

    TYRION
    The sow had a sweeter temper than some horses he had ridden.
    Patient and sure-footed, she accepted Tyrion with hardly a
squeal when he clambered onto her back, and remained motionless as he reached for
shield and lance. Yet when he gathered up her reins and pressed his feet into
her side, she moved at once. Her name was Pretty, short for Pretty Pig, and